What's Happening on Austin's Culture Front This Season?

Ballet Austin performs Liminal Glam, with choreography by Stephen Mills and music by Philip Glass, one of three dances that make up its season opener, To China, With Love...

Austinites can preview a sampler of the program in To China, With Love… September 23–25 at the Long Center, with choreography by Mills and Lar Lubovitch set to music by Dvořák, Mozart, and Philip Glass, performed by the Austin Symphony. The ballet returns home in December for The Nutcracker. February sees Belle Redux, inspired by Beauty and the Beast and first choreographed by Mills last year, then Magic Flute March 31–April 2, and Alice (in Wonderland), a 2012 ballet choreographed by Septime Webre, May 12–14.

The University of Texas’s Butler Trio will join the Austin Symphony Orchestra on October 21–22 when it performs Beethoven’s Concerto for Violin, Cello, and Piano in C Major as part of its 106th season.

Austin can take a chance on Mamma Mia! one last time during its farewell tour.

You’ll have to wait at least another season for the touring company of Hamilton to hit Austin, but plenty of appealing shows are coming, starting with Newsies and Live from Broadway: The Illusionists. December’s offering, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella, was written for television; many Boomers grew up on the camp-classic 1965 version with Lesley Ann Warren. Different kinds of nostalgia are on offer in January with Mamma Mia! in its farewell tour, and in March with the first touring production of Beautiful – The Carole King Musical. Phantom of the Opera in April and Something Rotten in May and June finish things out.

With perfect timing, a production of The Manchurian Candidate comes to town for one night only, September 17. The opera, based on the classic book and 1962 film, from composer Kevin Puts and librettist Mark Campbell, premiered last year. Austin Opera’s “semi-staged” production of the dark political thriller features projection-design scenery, along with plenty of conspiracy with satirical overtones Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman, Donizetti’s The Daughter of the Regiment, and Puccini’s Madame Butterfly round out the season.